The Bane of My Existence

Let's just say that God really pulls things together. I mean, tonight was small group. Small group for those of you guys not hip with it and still in high school (shameless college plug) is the college form of DG. So now that that is cleared up I'll give you some background on what has taken place. First of all the ski retreat was this past weekend and it was a blast. A definitely deserved the 9.5 for my fall. (The guy riding the ski lift above me saw me wipe out and gave me a 9.5) But the focus of the weekend was the treasure of Christ. Now after I got home from the retreat I felt really convicted to give the largest part of my life back to God. AKA: video games. Now I'm the first to say that video games are not a bad thing but they definitely are when the control such a big part of your life. But being my stubborn self I didn't really do anything about it. But after small group tonight God just works things out (totally by His soveriengty) to talk about how our time is spent for Him. So of course I remembered my conviction and long story short I've decided to give up video games for the week.

Now that of course, is the small part of the blog. But I will tell you how I came to that conclusion and how it can apply to all of our lives. Over the weekend Chris talked about making Christ the treasure and selling all we have because of the overwhelming joy of Christ. Now as an added bonus we went to see the Passion and that showed me in a new way how much Christ did for me and the depths he did just to save me. And then coming back tonight to talk about the 4th chapter in John Piper's book Don't Waste Your Life about glorifying Christ through pain and suffering (fun fun). But we then talked about how opposite our culture is and how we try to make life comfortable and easy. Hello! Wake up us! That is not our calling that Paul says and that Jesus says. But of course I said that its the small things that get me. The ones that I know are just going to bring me right outside my comfort level. For instance, I don't think that it would be extremely hard if someone walked into my dorm and put a gun to my head and said, "Denouce God or die," for me to say, "shoot me." But its the small things like getting up 10 minutes earlier to have a devo that makes me uncomfortable that I don't like to do. So its the fear of being uncomfortable, the pain and suffering of being uncomfortable that is what we are caught up on. So what's that have to do with video games? Well, that was what I had as my refuge and was completely in my comfort zone. I am so excited about this week, so excited about what God can do when I give him the place that should be his. One thing that the Passion taught me was that God is so worthy, more than we can say, do or live that we need to go out of our way to take up our cross daily. We need to go out of our way to pick up our method if execution. God will be glorified. God gave it all for us, so that we could give it all away. he is awesome and we need nothing but him. Not even video games, the bane of my existence.